


he loves you more

by citadelofswords



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Hospitals, M/M, Major Character Injury, Miscommunication, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ex Soviet assassin, an ex Soviet assassin ex spy, and an Air Force Pararescue veteran walk into a hospital. They’re the three most unlikely people to be waiting in the darkened hospital hallway, and yet here they are. It’s like the setup of a bad joke- or it would be, if they weren’t afraid of losing Steve, in the OR with doctors surrounding him on all sides. That’s what has Sam Wilson pacing holes in the floor.</p>
<p>(Or, the one where literally no one has their shit together, but they figure it out.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	he loves you more

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cassyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassyl/gifts).



> Somehow I got roped into the Marvel Rarepair Exchange. I blame Holly. Always making me wanna write stuff. ANYWAY. This is for tumblr user [likecastle](http://likecastle.tumblr.com/), who mentioned Sam and Steve and Bucky and Nat in any polyamorous combination and I just kind of... ran with it.
> 
> Drawn on my personal experiences over the last week with hospitals and the stress of waiting for news from it. Beta'd by Holly- thanks for that again, by the way.

An ex Soviet assassin, an ex Soviet assassin ex spy, and an Air Force Pararescue veteran walk into a hospital. They’re the three most unlikely people to be waiting in the darkened hospital hallway, and yet here they are. It’s like the setup of a bad joke- or it would be, if they weren’t afraid of losing Steve, in the OR with doctors surrounding him on all sides. That’s what has Sam Wilson pacing holes in the floor.

Bucky Barnes gets antsy in hospitals. It’s a part of him, just like his quick wit and charm. He’s never liked them, but it turned into a full-on fear when he was fifteen and Steve got so sick he was drowning in a hospital bed for a week before he had the strength to open his eyes, let alone move. That was in 1932. Now it’s 2014, and even though Steve has the strength of a flash flood, he still somehow got brought down by HYDRA. It was something powerful enough to send him into emergency surgery which, and Sam and Natasha didn’t tell him but he knows Steve may never wake up from it.

So, yeah, Bucky’s a little anxious. He, however, is still in his chair, metal hand clenched. Sam’s the one pacing.

Natasha, legs drawn up in her chair, arms wrapped around her stomach like they’re Steve’s arms giving her a hug, finally snaps. “Sleep,” she says vehemently to Sam. “You’re going to do him no good if you’re pacing like that, and especially not if you’re too tired to do anything should we need you.”

“I’ve tried sleeping,” Sam replies, and his voice is sharp and high and Bucky would never tell anyone, but he’s never been more terrified of Sam than he is in this moment. “I can’t sleep. I’m running on adrenaline and I can’t get down. I need to know that he’s okay.”

None of them would claim they love Steve Rogers any more than the rest of them. Sam loves Steve just as fiercely as Bucky does, and no one knows how Natasha feels because every time they ask she just goes really quiet and says “Love is for children” in the practiced monotone of someone who’s said it too, too often. But anyone who was watching them at this moment in time would believe Sam to be the worried boyfriend and Natasha and Bucky as… well, something else.

“If you’re going to be awake, then get us something to eat,” Natasha says, finally, scrubbing at her eyes like a child. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.”

Sam rolls his eyes but stalks away, the sound of his shoes fading into the distance as he rounds a corner towards the cafeteria. This leaves James and Natalia alone for the first time in… well… a long time.

Natasha seems to be holding true on her statement of sleep, and so Bucky takes to clenching and unclenching his fist, watching the metal plates move backwards and forwards as they recalibrate.

“Don’t stop doing that,” Natasha says quietly.

Bucky doesn’t. He just keeps going, watching the electronics whirr and buzz underneath the meta plating. Someday, he’d like to ask someone to pull the plates off so he has a better view of the electrics working his arm, making it fire, making it answer to his every thought the same way his other arm does.

“You know he never stopped talking about you,” Natasha said sleepily. “Steve. After he woke up. After New York, rather. He took me around the city and pointed out all the places you’d gone together, and he told me he thought you’d like me.”

“He was right,” Bucky says, and coughs. He’s been silent for the better part of the last twelve hours, preferring to listen and sign quickly to Sam over everyone’s head for fear of accidentally speaking in a different language.

“He loves you,” Natasha tells him, and Bucky knows that she hasn’t lied since the Helicarriers, at least not to him or Steve. “He loves you so much.”

“He loves you more,” Bucky says, and that’s it, isn’t it. That’s what’s got them all so tentative. Because Sam loves Steve, and Bucky loves Steve, and Natasha may or may not love Steve, and Steve loves Natasha more than the other two.

Except Natasha is shaking her head, but then Sam is stumping back with coffee and her eyes flutter closed and she doesn’t say anything else.

“Up, up,” Sam snaps, kicking Natasha sharply in the ankle. “Come on, I know you’re faking it. Sharon’s here, or something, wants to talk to you.”

Natasha unfolds herself from the chair, as gracefully as she can with stiff joints and a burned calf, and heads down the hallway, leaving Bucky Barnes with Sam Wilson.

If any of the three unlikely friends were the most likely to have become friends, outside of Steve Roger’s influence, it would be these two. But Sam is not looking at Bucky, and Bucky has gone back to watching his hand move.

“The last thing that he said was ‘Sam,’” Bucky says, because he knows that. He caught Steve as he fell, held him as he fell unconscious, yelling and cursing at him to stay awake, and he caught the last bit of what Steve was saying, and it was something about Sam, and telling Sam something important.

“I know,” Sam says, staring into his coffee mug. “I heard it. I know what he said. He thought you were Natasha. He was telling her to look after me. As if I need looking after.”

“Sam Wilson,” Bucky said, enunciating clearly, “you are a hot mess who needs looking after.”

Sam laughed, but it was a sharp, unpleasant sound. “Well, you think I’m hot, so that’s something, at least,” he said. “Not that what you think about me is invalid, but.”

“He loves you,” Bucky says, puzzled, because Steve may love Natasha most but he knows enough about his best friend to know that Steve loves Sam too.

Sam shakes his head. “He loves you more,” he says, and that’s not right Bucky thinks, just as Natasha comes stalking back.

“SHIELD’s trying to get involved now,” she says. “They’re not there when we actually need them, but now that the damage is done they want to intervene?”

“Tell the director to waive the bill and that’ll be enough for me,” Sam says, but there’s no humor in his tone.

“Mr. Barnes?” says the nurse, popping out of the room, and Bucky is on his feet so fast he sees stars. “You’re listed as next-of-kin, so I’d like to ask you to step in here, please.”

Bucky stumbles a little on entering the hospital room, and it bangs shut behind him, leaving Nat and Sam alone.

Natasha suddenly looks like a child, standing in the hallway with an uncertain look. If she had Sam’s ratty old Bucky Bear, the look would be complete. Her hair is a wreck and is sticking up in odd places, and her clothes have the rumpled “I slept in them for two days straight look.” Sam would be lying if he said he’d never thought of her in that way, but this is the first time he’s seen her the way he expects Steve sees her- not as Natasha Romanov, ex spy, ex assassin, current Avenger- but as Nat, his girlfriend.

It kind of hurts.

“Sam?” Natasha asks. The scathing is gone from her voice. She sounds- “I’m scared.”

Well, it’s not every day that you hear that.

Sam places his coffee down on the floor and stand up slowly. “He’s Captain America,” he says. “He has super-healing powers and was frozen for seventy years and came out with barely a scratch. Physically.”

“He’s been in surgery for hours, Sam.” Natasha says, and distantly Sam knows that he should be more concerned that she’s scared of something, because Natasha isn’t scared of anything. “He could never wake up.”

Sam would curse if he wasn’t so exhausted, and he takes Natasha’s wrist in his hands and tugs her into a hug; tighter, he thinks, than she’s expecting, but a hug nonetheless. She clings to him, and he knows that this moment of vulnerability she’s showing him is fleeting, so he files it away for bad days and focuses on reassuring her, running one hand through her hair as she presses her face into his chest.

“He’ll be fine,” he tells her. “They’ve probably dragged Bucky in to tell him that he’s healing faster than they can work to fix whatever it is. He’s going to wake up and ask for you, because he loves you-,”

“He loves you more,” Natasha says, and hold on.

“Oh my god,” he says, and it clicks in his head. “Bucky said the same thing to you, didn’t he?”

Natasha’s eyebrows furrowed. “Yes, but what does that-,”

“We’re idiots,” Sam says, just as the door opens and Bucky emerges from the room, looking like he’s about to cry.

“He’s gonna be okay,” he says, and Sam lets go of Natasha on one side to offer Bucky a spot sandwiched between them. “He’s gonna be okay, there were ribs in weird places but they moved them back and they’re healing and he should be waking up soon, but he’s gonna be okay.”

If there was a club for being In Love with Steve Rogers, Sam thinks, Bucky would be the president. He thinks he’d better tell him about his revelation, but for now they should just stand here, reassuring each other, because Steve is Alive, and that’s what matters.

 

* * *

 

“I’m fine, really, Nat, you can let go of me now.”

Someone bumps the door open with their hip, whether it’s Sam or Bucky or Natasha, no one knows, and the four of them attempt to squeeze in the door all at once and Sam starts laughing, real and warm, and Natasha helps a still weak Steve through the door.

“Now what?” Bucky asks.

“We could watch Star Trek,” Sam suggests. “The doctors want him off his feet, so off his feet he shall be.”

“We can’t all fit on the couch,” Steve says.

“Then we’ll go to bed,” Natasha decides, and Bucky lets out a little snort.

They curl up together, Steve between Sam and Bucky with Natasha twisted around all three of them near the waist. Sam’s left arm snakes behind Steve’s head to rest at the juncture of Bucky’s neck and his shoulder, Bucky’s arm going behind Steve to rest at the small of Sam’s back, his ankle hooked round Natasha’s and his other hand pressed against Steve’s chest, feeling his heart beat true and strong against his fingers. Sam’s other hand is playing with Natasha’s hair, and she’s got the remote.

“Are we going to talk about this?” Sam asks, and Steve leans over to cut him off with a kiss.

“Don’t think we need to, Wilson,” Natasha says, and reaches up to tangle her fingers with Steve’s for a moment so he can kiss her bruised knuckles. “I think we’ve figured it out.”

“We’ve had piss poor communication so far,” Sam mutters.

“We’ll work on that,” Steve says. “I’m willing to do this if you guys are.”

“We had a club,” Bucky says mournfully. “The ‘Being In Love with Steve Rogers’ club. I was gonna get us T-shirts.”

“You can still do it,” Steve grins, looking at him. “It’s never not going to be around, I should hope.”

“What kind of president would he be if he wasn’t in love with you?” Sam jokes.

Steve laughs. “Talk later. Now, Star Trek.”

 

* * *

 

A supersoldier, an ex Soviet assassin, an ex Soviet assassin ex spy, and an Air Force Pararescue veteran watch Star Trek at the very beginning of their very tentative relationship.

It’s the set up to a bad joke, but it’s their bad joke, and it makes them laugh, and that’s what matters.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Come say hello.](http://citadelofswords.tumblr.com)


End file.
